My two cents: Days of warm-and-fuzzy coaching styles are long gone
Over a 20-year period from 1980-99, Arizona football coaches Larry Smith and Dick Tomey forced out or fired just three assistant coaches. That’s probably a record in the people-are-expendable world of college football.
Receivers coach Norm Anderson, secondary coach Ted Williams and offensive coordinator Ben Griffith were the only coaches asked to leave the program. Arizona matched that over the course of a couple weeks recently, terminating relationships with Jeff Casteel, Bill Kirelawich and David Lockwood.
This is the new way of college football. The Pac-12 will have five new defensive coordinators in 2016, at Oregon, USC, Utah, UA and Oregon State. In 2015, there were new defensive coordinators at Colorado, UCLA, WSU and Cal. The “senior” defensive coordinators in the league, at ASU, Stanford and Washington, will be starting Year 3.
Part of it is that as college offenses become more and more productive, defensive coaches are scapegoats. RichRod and Casteel butted heads all season, and their philosophical differences led to a change. RichRod wanted more blitzing and bigger linemen, among other things. Casteel, an old-school coach, held to what he knows.
The UA was so small up front on the defensive line that it almost wasn’t fair in Pac-12 games.
To his credit, Casteel didn’t leave openly bitter. He phoned Salpointe Catholic defensive lineman Justin Holt, one of the UA’s few line recruits of note in the RichRod years, and told him he was leaving, and that there were no hard feelings.
Tomey faced a job crisis in 1990 and again in 1997 before being asked to leave in 2000. He lost so many good coaches to better jobs or retirement — Larry Mac Duff, Rich Ellerson, Ron McBride, John Baxter, Clarence Brooks, Pat Hill, Johnnie Lynn, Rip Scherer, Homer Smith, Jim Young — that it’s amazing he lasted 14 seasons. But that sort of warm-and-fuzzy, family approach has gone.
To his credit, RichRod understands you can’t patch what’s wrong. He realized it was time to step back, tear down and start over.
